Marilyn Footage ‘Found’
In Susan King’s “Marilyn Monroe’s Last Film Work Resurrected for New Documentary” (May 28), about the unfinished Fox movie “Something’s Got to Give,” she reports that Kevin Burns “was ‘blown away’ when he found the 9 1/2 hours of footage during his research.” I wonder where Burns was searching?
Back in 1989, Fox Entertainment News reporter Henry Schipper, KTTV editor Ken Turner and I also “found” the various reels of raw footage in the Fox vault. We presented the material to then Fox Chairman Barry Diller, who commissioned a documentary on the subject. That project, titled “Something’s Got to Give,” was written and presented by Schipper, and brilliantly edited by Turner, who reconstructed most of the existing scenes. It aired on Fox in 1990.
For Burns to take credit for finding the material and editing the scenes is ludicrous. His work is, at best, a rehash.
RHYS THOMAS
Supervising producer,
“Something’s Got to Give”
Van Nuys
Only good movies
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